


What You Are is a Cat in Sunshine

by Siria



Series: Nantucket AU [60]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-15
Updated: 2008-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-03 20:21:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Rodney may have settled with surprising swiftness into a life of meandering domesticity, and Cash may have displayed an inordinate attachment to a certain sun-warmed patch of tile in the kitchen, but there was at least one bachelor in their little grey house who still lived the life of a raffish Lothario.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Are is a Cat in Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> Written for hilarytamar, who played a vital role in rescuing the remnants of my sanity from the Evils of Technology. Thanks to Jenn for betaing.

John and Rodney may have settled with surprising swiftness into a life of meandering domesticity, and Cash may have displayed an inordinate attachment to a certain sun-warmed patch of tile in the kitchen, but there was at least one bachelor in their little grey house who still lived the life of a raffish Lothario. Rodney found them first, in the tiny crawl space underneath their porch: Planck, and a large grey female cat, and four squeaking, mewling little scraps of fur nursing at her belly.

John thought they were kind of cute, but Rodney was enamoured of them straight away. The mother cat accepted the basket and the cushions and the food he provided them with a kind of placid equanimity and an tolerance of his big hand stroking down her back, which made John think that she must have an owner somewhere on the island, for all that she wore no collar. She had no problem, either, with the kittens becoming Rodney's preserve once they were grown enough to totter around on unsteady limbs, and soon they returned to her only to feed. They'd been absorbed into the kitchen, Rodney's domain: a place of sounds (Rodney on the phone; the low noise of music on the radio; the rustling of papers as Rodney sorts through his proofs for publication) and smells (lasagne cooking in the oven; Cash, damp and shaggy from the beach; the Hawaiian coffee perpetually brewing on the counter) equally alarming and enthralling to four small kittens.

They couldn't keep them—not in a house this size and not with a work schedule as haphazard as theirs—so two were destined for Ronon once they'd been weaned, the other two to be given to a couple of guys John knew through work. Rodney had waged a valiant campaign to be allowed to keep at least one, but John had placated him by letting him name them instead, lying through his teeth when he promised that Ronon and Theo and Rick wouldn't rename them straight away.

Up, Down, Charm and Strange—Rodney had said that he regretted that there wasn't a fifth and a sixth to call Top and Bottom, but John had wrinkled his nose and said _Rodney, come on, that'd be **weird**_—colonised the rest of the house, too. John had found Strange sitting in the laundry hamper once, tiny head disappearing inside Rodney's binary code-patterned boxer shorts; which meant that it wasn't so strange to come inside after a morning spent painting the front fence to find Rodney sacked out on the couch, pages of proofs dangling from lax fingers while three kittens attempted the perilous ascent of Rodney's belly, the fourth perched daintily on his forehead. Planck was sitting on the back of the couch and watching over them all with a kind of slant-eyed, patriarchal pride that could have been close kin to the warm ache of affection that the sight sparked off in the place behind John's breastbone.

After all his protestations that he couldn't help with housework today, not with the _mound_ of editing he had to do, Rodney apparently found a nap in a pool of sunlight with a cat perched on his head preferable to wading through John's red pen corrections of his syntax and his egregious abuse of the Oxford comma. John grinned, as unsurprised and as unexpectedly, welcomely charmed as ever, and really, where was a camera when you needed one? Radek and Sam'd definitely get a kick out of this.

Shaking his head and smiling, John padded into the kitchen and turned on the tap to scrub the worst of the paint spatters from his arms, cursing a little under his breath whenever some of it snagged in the hair there, and enjoying the way the muscles of his shoulders ached in a pleasant reminder of a productive morning. He put the now-dry breakfast dishes away, humming something cheerful and off-key to himself, while he decided between maybe making a start on painting the porch or just going for a jog while his knee still felt good.

By the time John drifted back out to the living room, wiping his hands dry on his jeans, Rodney was stirring awake, and little tabby Down was mewing in wide-eyed triumph from the heights of Rodney's belly. (Charm, who seemed to have abandoned mountaineering for now, was nosing curiously at Rodney's ear.)

John leaned over the couch, untangling the blanket around Rodney's legs and picking up the copies of the _Journal of Astrophysics_ that had fallen to the floor. There were big X's in thick, blue Sharpie scrawled on some of the pages, and John rolled his eyes a little, knowing that that meant he'd have to talk Rodney out of sending some scathing letters to the publishers in the morning. The fellatio sacrifices he had to make so as not to have to put up with a libel law-suit. Or, you know. A cranky Rodney.

Placing them back on the coffee table, he held them down against the breeze coming through the open window with a big, oval green thing that looked something like a brooch but with no clasp; some kind of souvenir rock Rodney must have brought back with him from his most recent trip to Colorado.

"Collecting paperweights your new hobby?" John asked when Rodney's eyes blinked open.

"Huh?" Rodney said intelligently. "Wassat? No, s'a... thing."

"If by thing, you mean rock," John said, circling around to perch on the edge of the couch and brush a kiss against Rodney's forehead, rub a thumb over the point where Rodney's left hip met the soft skin of his stomach.

"No," Rodney said, voice sounding slightly less blurred with sleep, "S'a thing. There's a knack to it."

"Sure," John replied, indulgent, and told Rodney that he was going for a jog along the beach toward town; did Rodney want him to bring anything back? Rodney ignored the question, peering up at him and telling him that he was starting to burn, he'd better not have forgotten to put on any sun-cream.

John took that for a no; so he tossed off a sloppy salute and said _yessir_; and there was a grin on his face when he toed on his running shoes at the back door before he headed outside and took off down the beach, whistling at Cash to come follow him.

John knew that behind him, in the little grey house, Rodney would be turning over with a grunt, the half-eaten bags of chips stuffed down the back of the couch cushions crackling with his movements, and that the soft sounds of his snores would be matched in volume and contentment by the purring of a whole family of cats. He picked up the pace, sand kicking up beneath his feet and salt air fresh in his lungs and thought hey, maybe he'd bring Rodney back some doughnuts.


End file.
